Source: The world has burned through half the carbon budget for 1.5C, scientists say – The Washington Post
The world has eliminated half of its remaining carbon budget to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels in justthe lastthree years, scientists said Thursday.
In early 2020, scientists at the U.N.Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that the world could burn only 500 billion more tons of carbon dioxide and still have a decent chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), a threshold aimed at averting disastrous warming. This is known as the “carbon budget.” (For reference, the world is predicted to burn about 40 billion tons of CO2 this year.)
But now, researchers estimate, in a new paper published Thursday, that the number has been cut in half — thanks to three years of high emissions and new scientific understanding of how particles of air pollution, known asaerosols,affect the climate.
Leave a Reply